Comments by "GH1618" (@GH-oi2jf) on "Ask a German: How Do You Deal With Imperial Units? | Feli from Germany" video.

  1. The reason we have not is that we (in the USA) adopted the Metric System in 1893, so our citizens and businesses have been free to use Metric units for a long time. Many do choose to use Metric units for international trade, or simply because they prefer. Others do not. We do not like coercion in the United States.
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  2.  @antjeschroeder  — Everyone who learns to cook in the United States knows what a measuring cup is. Even children can learn to cook according to US practice.
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  3.  @ssgtmole8610  — NASA was using Metric units at the time. A contractor provided some number in the wrong unit and it wasn’t caught. This was a QA problem. NASA (JPL) has an excellent record in unmanned space exploration. Considering the complexity of sending spacecraft to other bodies in the Solar System, their record is astounding. People who want to pick on NASA cite this mistake over and over, even though it was many years ago, because there are no other failures to cite.
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  4. Good thing we don’t use Imperial units in the United States, then.
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  5.  @MethosJK9  — Medicine does not strictly follow S.I. The units of blood pressure (and eye pressure) are mm of Hg, not Pascals.
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  6. There is no unit for electrcity usage other than KWH, as far as I know, but my natural gas bill gives usage in therms. A therm is 100,000 BTUs.
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  7. We (in the USA) use Metric units in science classes long before college. I’ve been out of school so long I don’t remember when they were introduced in my case, but it isn’t important. Rulers used by school children generally have inches on one edge and cm on the other, so a first grade student would be exposed to cm and mm.
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  8.  @anotherabeer4341  — Of course everybody would continue using Customary units in their personal lives. The Act did not attempt to force general conversion, but it did influence business, nevertheless, when international trade was involved.
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  9. I’ve been out of school a long time, but we used Metric units in high school science classes. I don’t remember junior high, but there wasn’t nearly as much calculation in those science classes. A common ruler used by primary school children has a one foot scale on one edge and a 30 cm scale on the other.
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  10. “2x4” is a nominal size. It is just the name of the size. Actual finished size is 1.5 x 3.5 inches. Dimension lumber sizes are standardized throughout North America.
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  11. When one learns to cook in the US, learning to measure flour in a measuring cup is a beginner’s lesson.
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  12. Since 1959, we all use the international foot, based on the international inch of 25.4 mm.
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  13. I’ve visited a few European cities. One of the first things I did was learn how to use the rail transit, but it worked a little differently in each city. They could all be the same, but did I whine about it? No. Most at least use the same money, but Prague? Different money. Did I whine about it? No. Of course the languages were different, so I tried to learn a little of each language, enough to be polite. Of course they all displayed temperature in Celsius. No problem.
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  14. Fractions expressed as a ratio may be most often used in measurement, but that is not their only use. No course in elementary mathematics is complete without covering fractions.
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  15. Where is “here”? In the United States you may use whichever system you prefer.
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  16. Units are equivalent, as far as I am concerned. I prefer US Customary units for ordinary purposes, but Metric units are nothing to get worked up about. Medicine, for example, is entirely Metric and is no problem at all for me and likely for most Usanians. Wine comes in a Metric bottle and nobody in the US cares, at least I don’t. All current cars have Metric hardware, but old US cars and many other things have inch-based SAE hardware. The wrench I prefer is the one that fits the nut I have to turn.
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  17.  @MBrieger  — Fractions expressed as a ratio are just a part of mathematics. They are not peculiar to measurement. Anyone who hasn’t studied them doesn’t have a complete education in elementary mathematics.
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  18.  @Anson_AKB  — In that first paragraph, we would represent the sides as 10.5 x 14.0 inches. Then it is straightforward application of the Pythagorean Theorem. You are making the problem look awkward by using awkward notation. If those numbers were cm, the calculation would be exactly the same.
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  19.  @mariostar13  — Yes, “America” is not the name of the USA, but people around the world nevertheless use it as shorthand for the full name. I prefer “Usania” but it doesn’t seem to be catching on. I guess I’m not an influencer.
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  20.  @Anson_AKB  — No, I don’t agree. I don’t get your point at all. Whether you use cm or inches, the calculation is exactly the same.
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  21. No, a “cup” is not just any cup you have at hand. Everybody in the US knows what a measuring cup is. We have two kinds, one for liquids and a set for solids like flour and sugar.
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  22.  @douglasfur3808  — US Customary units have been defined relative to Metric units since 1893. There has never been a plan to eliminate Customary units. The Metric Conversion Act explicitly stated that Customary units would remain in use. It would be impractical to completely eliminate them. Even countries whose people think they are fully Metric have some things which are not.
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  23. No, the two space shuttle disasters were not related to units.
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  24. That’s just wrong. Half of that number is just 4 and 7/16 inches. No calculation that can’t be done in your head is needed, and there is a mark on your measuring tape for the distance. But a carpenter would probably find the center geometrically without doing any calculations.
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  25. Accuracy does not depend on units.
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  26. A league is not an official unit anywhere, and it was mainly a nautical measurement.
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  27. I have never heard of stones being used in the US. When I bought a new bathroom scale recently, however, I discovered that it had three modes: US, UK, and Metric. Inexpensive electronics have made it possible for Usanians to easily adopt Metric measurement in their personal lives. My new digital furnace thermostat also has modes for Fahrenheit and Celsius.
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  28. Can you state your question more clearly?
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  29. No, it is decimal. It has nothing to do with measurement.
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  30. “Standard” was a term which mechanics started using decades ago when European, then Japanese vehicles first started coming to the United States. All US cars and trucks used SAE hardware, which literally was the standard compared to the Metric hardware on the relatively few imports. The imports increased, then the US car companies went Metric, but the term “standard” continued in use. It seems like the wrong term today, but it is just a convenient name, nothing more.
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  31. The liter (or litre) is not an S. I. unit. It is Metric, though, as it is derived from le mètre.
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  32. The reason we didn’t teach only Metric units is that we are bimetral. If we taught only one system of measurement, students would be half-educated. That’s 0.5-educated for any Metric-monotheists out there.
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  33. Our (US) pint and gallon are not Imperial, so the fact that the Imperial System makes no sense doesn’t really affect us.
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  34. The United States, for one. The guidance for the moon missions was calculated in Metric units, even though US units were displayed to the astronauts as they were landing.
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  35. Checking the temperature to decide what to wear is not a problem in logic, though.
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  36. Didn’t you ever use feet with decimal fractions? I have an engineer’s tape marked in feet, tenths, and hundredths.
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  37. There are many ways of making tape measures. I have several: inches only, cm only, and combined. I have inches with the carpenter’s scale and the engineer’s scale. I have rulers with inches in full, 1/2, 1/4, and 1/8 scale.
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  38. Do you mean what they are called or how they are spelled? In the USA we use US spelling.
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  39. In my long life I have never heard anyone use that comparison. And, by the way, comparison to familiar objects is not measurement, it is just estimating. In any case the comparison is not peculiar to either system of units. A full-size bus is about 12 meters long, so the estimate in your example was 18 meters.
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  40. “Standard” is mostly used by mechanics. The term originated when we started to get a few imported vehicles with Metric hardware. “Standard” was easier to say than “SAE” to distinguish the wrenches. Nowadays, all automobiles use Metric hardware, so the term is an oxymoron.
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  41. Gauge seems to be backward because it does not represent thickness directly. It originated as the number of drawing steps required to produce a particular size of wire. Successive draws produce finer wire, and higher gauge numbers. The same convention was then applied to sheet metal. I have done electrical wiring and have never thought the AWG system to be odd. It is just the way it is. It is much easier to remember that #12 is what we use for 20A circuits than to remember the diameter of the wire. Nobody cares about the diameter except electrical engineers. We just use the prescribed gauge for a particular application.
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  42. Each industry makes its own decision. As for canned soup, I looked at a few cans and they don’t measure in nice round numbers on either scale. There is no way to tell how they are measuring things in the soup factory.
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  43. A lot of attention was paid to it. The entire US automotive industry went Metric. Many federal agencies went Metric. The Act does not require general conversion. It was intended to provide encouragement and assistance to those who chose to convert.
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  44. In the first place, love is for people, not systems of measurement. In the second place, US units are not “Imperial.” In the third place, the manner in which units are defined is of no importance to anyone but a metrologist. We used feet and pounds when they were not defined relative to Metric units. We continued to use them the same way after 1893, when they were redefined in terms of Metric units.
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  45. The “second” is a legacy unit, not a Metric unit. It is not derived from le mètre. It is S.I., as you say.
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  46. That isn’t the main reason, though. If we thought it was important to change to Metric highway signs, we would do it. It isn’t important.
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  47.  @jimgreen5788  — The first two letters are my initials.
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  48. School children use a 30 cm ruler, about the same as a US 12 inch ruler.
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  49. Sometimes we do, but not for some insignificant thing like units of measure.
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  50. We aren’t into coercion in the United States. Coercion is for fascists.
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  51. A Swede, Carl Edvard Johansson, was the father of the international inch, though. He defined the machinist’s inch, which became the international inch, in 1912.
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  52. People who learn to bake in the US learn how to measure flour. If you know how to do it, the variability is within the tolerance of most home baking recipes. People who bake more sensitive recipes can get scales and weigh the flour. The bigger problem Europeans will have is that the flour in the US may not be what they are used to. Julia Child discussed this problem in her memoir.
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  53.  @alexaales7937  — In My Life in France, JC wrote that American all-purpose bleached flour has more gluten than French unbleached flour.
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  54. That incident was not as significant as you say. Thomas Jefferson (then Secretary of State) wanted sample standards for the meter and kilogram for consideration. They were lost, but if he needed them he would have obtained another set. He was not yet prepared to adopt them as US units, so moved on to other things. He could not have acted to adopt them anyway. That would be up to Congress. It wasn’t until 1866 that the Metric System was adopted by the United States.
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  55. Sure “they” do, but you have to find out who “they” are. If you go to a hardware store, it might not have one.
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  56. The distinction between weight and mass is unimportant in ordinary activities, because we do almost everything at the surface of Earth. If a scale in a delicatessen is calibrated with a 1 kg reference mass, then it will report a weight of 1 kg for 1 kg of mass. Weight and mass will have been made equivalent for that scale in that location.
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  57. We (in the USA) are not “without Metric.” We adopted the Metric System in 1866.
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  58. If you have a scale such as is used in a delicatessen, and calibrate it using a 1 lbm weight, then when you weigh one pound you will be getting one lb-mass.
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  59. It isn’t arrogance. Honestly, most Usanians give it no thought at all. We go to the grocery and buy things marked by the pound just because that is the way they have always been marked. The same with gasoline by the gallon. It just doesn’t occur to us that anyone would want to change something that works. Once in awhile something might change to Metric units. For example the common wine bottle is 750 ml (formerly 4/5 quart). When it changed nobody noticed.
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  60. Using inches is not using the Metric System. Only the metrologists used the Metric System when they defined the international inch.
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  61. The government and corporate “overlords” are not responsible. The US government already requires Metric units of contractors for many things. Many private businesses use Metric units in order to trade internationally. We continue to use US Customary units for ordinary purposes like buying groceries because the people like it the way it is.
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  62. US, not “American.” e.g. A barrel of oil is 42 US gallons.
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  63. A “mil” is a thousandth of an inch. A millionth is generally called a microinch. Do you really use millionths?
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  64. What were you measuring in 32nds? We don’t use 32nds and 64ths much.
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  65. No shame has nothing to do with it. US units have been defined relative to Metric units since 1893, because there are practical reasons for doing so. We are a practical people and that is nothing to be ashamed of. Nobody is “needlessly multiplying” anything. We just use US units without any regard to how they are defined.
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  66. The USA is bimetral. You are free to “switch” anything that you control. It is up to individuals and individual businesses to use whichever suits their purpose.
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  67. We do not use Imperial units in the United States. We use US Customary units and they are not the same (although some are). The first thing to do in learning how to deal with them is to learn that they are not “Imperial.”
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  68. We are bimetral, and have been for a long time. Many federal agencies use primarily Metric units.
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  69. What I find strange is having nightmares over something as benign as units.
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  70. We know what an Olympic-size pool is, and people who will compete internationally have access to them. I’m not a swimmer, so have no direct knowledge, but I don’t expect that schools with substandard pools immediately built new ones unless they had a need to. I just looked it up. The NCAA still has swimming events marked in yards. It doesn’t matter that there isn’t international recognition. What would that mean anyway? They have recognition in the NCAA. Anyone who wishes to compete in an international swimming competition just needs an Olympic-size pool.
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  71. You mean one bottle of wine. The unit is the “bottle.”
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  72. That is incorrect. We use decimal fractions with US Customary units in many contexts. The manner of specifying fractions is entirely separate from the choice of units. Some people may think that expressing fractions as a ratio of integers is inherent in the US Customary system, but that is only because tape measures and rulers with the carpenter’s scale are ubiquitous. I have tapes with decimal fractions, however, in both feet and inches. We may use decimal fractions wherever it suits us, regardless of the unit.
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  73. We do not use Imperial in the USA.
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  74. Our system of measurement is named “US Customary.” We are still here.
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  75.  @vincentng2392  — An adult aspirin used to be 5 grains. Now it is 325 mg. I don’t see how that is easier, but it doesn’t matter. The unit is the “aspirin” for practical purposes.
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  76. The “foot” and “hand” are well-defined units, and have been for a long time. Their origin is of only historical interest. The “hand” is one-third of a foot (four inches) and is mainly used for denoting the height of a horse at the withers.
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  77.  @mango4ttwo635  — Note the word “only.”
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  78. The Fahrenheit temperature scale is the one thing we (in the USA) use that makes the most sense. It is a carefully designed scale intended to represent the temperatures we nearly always experience in a nonnegative number of only two digits. A step of 1°F is about the finest step that we can perceive. It is a human-engineered scale.
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  79. Error at 4:20 (on the screen). An oz is 0.0625 lb. You give the Metric value correct to four significant digits, but only one for US units. Why?
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  80.  @FelifromGermany  — “28.35” is four significant digits, which is a fairly precise expression of the conversion to grams. “0.06” is only one significant digit and an error of about 4%. The correct value is 0.06250 lb. In this case, it is exact, not an endless decimal. In cases where there is a repeating decimal, you can use an equal number of significant digits to give a figure of comparable precision. Just throwing away most of the digits is creating an impression that US units are less precise, which they are not. In either system of units, comparable precision can be obtained to any degree subject to the limitation of the measuring tools, not the units.
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  81.  @FelifromGermany  — Do they not teach significant digits in zgermany? I’m sure they do in science and engineering courses, so perhaps you didn’t have it. Where the decimal point is placed doesn’t matter. “28.35 g” is exactly the same as “.02835 kg”. In either case, you have four significant digits, which is an indication of the precision. One oz is exactly .06250 lb, represented with the same number of significant digits.
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  82.  @FelifromGermany  — I’m not trying to be difficult. I just assumed it was a careless error, and it is 4%, which is huge, especially considering that you have four significant digits for the conversion to grams. It only requires three significant digits to give the exact conversion of an ounce to pounds.
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  83. Everything is decimal. The only place where decimal notation is not used is computers, where we sometimes use octal or hexadecimal notation.
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  84. Time is not Metric. It is a legacy system. S.I. recognizes only the second to avoid all the complexities of timekeeping.
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  85. What do you mean “our own units”? We (in the USA) are bimetral. We use both US Customary (English) units and Metric units. Nutrition labels are given in Metric units because nutritionists are scientists and science is done in Metric units. Serving size is often one cup because serving is not a scientific thing. The consumer knows what a cup is, so can interpret the label more easily if the serving size is something easily understood. Of course “serving size” is somewhat arbitrary, but it is used only to compare one product to another, not to tell you how much to eat.
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  86.  @icerepublic  — I’ll have to check that out. I have found it useful at times when I want the product with the least added sugar. It could perhaps be improved, but it’s nothing for me to get worked up about.
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  87. Except that is inaccurate. It is more useful to remember that 20°C is 68°F. That is the calibration temperature for tape measures.
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  88. Nobody checks the temperature when he boils water anyway. I just look at the water.
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  89. A US gallon is indeed 231 cu in, but that isn’t a factor that anybody uses in the ordinary course of things. It isn’t about conversion, it’s about having convenient units. We buy gasoline by the gallon; we don’t need to know how many cubic inches it is. We use cu in for engine displacement, although we are now using liters as well. We never used quarts or gallons. Those are for liquid measure.
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  90. I don’t hate anything, but I do prefer US Customary units to Imperial.
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  91. Some do. Not all.
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  92. We have never used the Imperial System in the United States, which is why some of the US measures differ from Imperial. “2x4” is not a measurement, it is a nominal size — a name for a particular size of lumber which has been standardized as 1.5” by 3.5” in N. America.
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  93. It is the name of the person who developed the initial version of the scale. The rule “i before e” is English. In German, when those two letters are together, use the “long” sound of the second letter.
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  94. US units are connected to one another, just not by a factor of ten. The US system obviously is practical, because countless structures have been built using it. When Europeans have trouble using it, it is likely due to a combination of being unfamiliar with the units, unfamiliar with methods of working with the units, and a bad attitude about having to learn something new. Take the problem of finding the center, for example. It depends on the particulars, not only the size but other particulars of the thing to be measured. For small things, such as a photographic print, or a piece of dimension lumber, there are tools to find the center. But suppose I want to find the center of a wall fairly accurately, and the length involves some odd fraction. I could measure from each end in whole feet (or half feet if necessary) and make marks, leaving a space of less than one foot in the middle. Then I would measure the space carefully. Then I would switch to my half-scale rule (made in West Germany by Alvin) and find the same distance mark (but at half scale). That is the center. There are other methods carpenters might use, such as the diagonal method.
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  95. Why is that funny?
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  96.  @mannmanuel7762  — It isn’t random, though. The Fahrenheit scale puts the temperatures nearly always experienced by most people on a scale of 0 to 100. Below zero and 100 or more is dangerous. The scale is human-oriented. The original method of construction may have been a little imprecise (so was le mètre), but the modern Fahrenheit scale is tied to the Celsius scale, so is as precise as it is. 0°C = 32°F and 100°C = 212°F. The two scales are equivalent, just optimized for different purposes.
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  97.  @FelifromGermany  — The pound is an international standard (since 1959), so “US pound” is a misnomer. I expect “pfund” is half a kg. That is not unreasonable, because it is close to a pound. It makes more sense for a country that uses Metric units to use a Metric “pound” rather than the international pound.
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  98.  @jeremybarker7577  — Accurate, except that the yard was formerly the base unit of length, but in 1959 the international inch became the base unit of length.
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  99. In fact, navigation for the Apollo missions was done in Metric units. The console for the astronauts displayed Customary units.
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  100. Yes, so?
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  101. Here’s a tip: You are allowed to use Metric units in the United States.
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  102. Those are rarely used units.
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  103. True, but nobody uses Newtons except engineers and physicists. Scales set to Metric units will weigh in kg units. This is meaningful, because if you calibrate your scale with a one kg mass in the place where you will use it, then the weight displayed is the mass. The mass is what you want anyway, although we don’t use that term in everyday usage. We weigh ourselves at home and we buy food by weight at the market.
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  104. The navigation was done in Metric units, although Customary values were displayed to the astronauts.
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  105. This forum has acquired a lot of spam.
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  106. President Reagan did not kill the Metric System in the US, where it has been legal since 1866. He killed the US Metric Board, which was charged with facilitating education and voluntary conversion to Metric units. He did not do this unilaterally, but on advice from others in both major parties. Its work was essentially complete, because most businesses that wanted to convert had already done so. There is nothing today preventing any business that wants to convert from doing so.
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  107. If you are making a cake from scratch, you may use whichever units you prefer in the USA.
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  108. I doubt that, but I don’t know how to determine it. But consider, for example, the 19-inch equipment rack, used world-wide. There are Metric specifications for these, in which the vertical unit (“U”) is given as 44.45 mm. That is not Metric hardware, even though given in Metric units. I think they allow actual Metric mounting screws now, though. It’s a bit like baseball rules. Baseball is played world-wide, and there are rules published with Metric dimensions for the field, but the length from pitcher’s rubber to plate is still 60 feet six inches everywhere.
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  109. Coins are counted, not measured. They are decimal, not Metric.
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  110. She didn’t forget. She ignored them because they are hardly ever used.
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